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SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

FACTORS AFFECTING SUCESSPROBLEMS IN SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

Ss may feel have nothing to say or may not wish to discuss topic

Choose topic carefully Ensure topic part of an integrated focus not a one-off unconnected to other work the

ss are doing

Ensure tasks are clear, focused and meaningful to ssSs may lack aspects of language necessary to participate

Anticipate problemsand pre-teach / revise anything necessarySs may lack speaking skills

Ensure there is development of conversation skills / strategies as well as opportunityfor speaking

Ss may find it difficult participating for cultural reasons

How you organise the ss ie how they are grouped needs careful consideration If ss are not sued to a fluency focus or opportunities for extended speaking, implement

learner training so that they become3 increasinly confident

Participation dominated by certain ss

Think about allocating roles in activities Think through who is working with whom Work out culturally appropriate (and ones you feel comfortable using) strategies for

controlling dominating students (e.g. giving quieter ss the chance to take on larger

roles or putting stronger ss together in one group and quieter ones ina different

group)

Encourage a more co-operative approach in a one-to-one tutorialSs inhibitied by fear of making language mistakes

Ensure a limited, anonymous approach to mistakes (e.g. collecting mistakes during anactivity and putting up theexampleson the board for ss to correct as a group one the

activity has finished)

Encourage ss and praise them Ensure they know they are making progress

Ss may not see necessity for speaking fluency practce

Ensure aims are clear and clearly communicated to ss. You may find that at the start of a course, you will have to establish a rationale for the

balanced approach to language that you wish to /will take

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Other factors which can make a task easier or harder.

These issues which may be different as different level sand thse too can affect the success of

an activity

Too much time pressure can negatively affect a fluency speaking focus. It is importantto allow for not only realistic production time, but also ss thinking / planning or

preparatinon time

Lower levels cope more easily with more concrete tasks and higher levels are oftenmore tolerant of more abstract tasks. E.g. asking lower levels to plan a two-day tour of

an interesting city in their country for classmates will be easier than asking them to

agree on the ranking of statements about education

Lower levels will speak more confidently and successfully if tasks involve things theyare familiar with and unpredicatability is limited while higher levels can be motivate

dwith graeter unpredictability. The example above illustrates this as well. SS may

have very different opinioins and reasons for the orderthey feel appropriate int he

ranking acitivty, hence, the unpredicatability; planning the tour can be set up to limit

the variables and so the unpredicatability.

It is important to minimised the linguistic complexity associated with completing thetask: a task dealing with the her and now is linguistically less demanding than one

which involves considering the hypothetical.

The complexity of thetask itself can makethe task easier or harder. Thus a taskinvolving groups making decisions about the food to serve at a party they are planning

is less complex and so eaier than a roleplay of a negotiation with fee-in cards

Finally ss familiarity with topc (regardless of level)will affect the ease and success withwhich they complete the task. The more they know about atopic, the more

confidence they will have in doing a task related to it.

THOUGHTFUL AND THOROUGH PLANNING AND CAREFUL SETTING UP AND STUDENT

PREPARATION IN CLASS FOR FLUENCY ACTIVITIES CAN INCREASE THE PROBABILITY OF

SUCCESS. It is dangerous to assumethat fluency activities are easy to do in class: the care that

needs to gointo the planning and exectution of them should not be underestimated.